Friday, January 05, 2007

Poll: Majority Believe Iraq Coverage Biased

According to the Gallup News Service, a December survey of a representative sample of 569 adult Americans revealed that fully 56 percent believe that major news media coverage of the situation in Iraq is generally inaccurate while only 4 out of 10 Americans agree that it is accurate.
Moreover, the survey showed that by a 61 percent to 36 percent margin, those who feel that the Iraq coverage is inaccurate say it is because the media make the situation there appear worse than it actually is.

I'm glad to see that most of the country agrees the media is biased (atleast in this situation), but the damage has still been done...people might think its biased, but their opinion of the war has still been altered by misleading and biased coverage.

9 comments:

jhbowden said...

It is absolutely insane. The media is extremely eager to show images of American troops dying, but they are hysterical about not showing terrorists getting pwned, starting with Saddam Hussein.

Anonymous said...

Why just Iraq? Isn’t it the case with everything media covers? News is filled with war, murder, kidnap, violence and controversies as if the whole world is in a big chaos!! Their focus has always been to ‘sensationalize’ the events and tell the bad side of the story first. I find c-span/ Book-TV to be better than those news channels filled with ‘breaking news’, flashy graphics and loud mouths!

Sorry – it’s not just ‘Iraq’. It’s much wider and unfortunate.

The Game said...

very true

Jim said...

You post title and that of NewsMin's is misleading. The Gallup Poll says that a majority thinks the news is inaccurate, not "biased".

That's not surprising because the NewsMin article doesn't actually tell the whole story of what the Gallup poll found. Can you believe it?!

While 56% said that coverage was inaccurate, 36% of THEM believe the media presents Iraq news as better than it actually is.

That means that 61% believe that media news is accurate or presents a better picture of Iraq than it actually is. So less than 40% think the media is biased towards portraying a worse picture.

This shoots down the entire NewsMin post AND yours.

Again, you should actually read the stuff instead of taking NewsMin's word for it.

The Game said...

your math is algoreish

Ron said...

So let me get this straight, you think things are going well and there is good news(beyond handing out pencils and new infrastructure that gets bombed after it is built) that needs to be reported? I think the complainers should help fix this problem and take on the task of finding and reporting the good news so we will all know what it is. Otherwise this is so much hogwash and whining.

The Game said...

I just talked to two people who are in Iraq...they had a three week leave during xmas.
These two and EVERY OTHER soldier I have talked to say the media coverage is complete crap...
Are things great....no.
Are they as bad as the media says...nope
A vast majority of the country has absolutely NO problems

Jim said...

Algoreish? You mean as in it's absolutely correct but PROVES something that your world view will not permit you to acknowledge?

jhbowden said...

Game--

You need to understand that in the minds of these people, George Bush is the illegitimate bloodthirsty fascist, and Saddam Hussein is the legitimate SecProg ruler of Iraq.

Any news story that doesn't tell a story of American sin is biased to the 36% Jim refers to.